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The Ledgers of Baldr: 4E149
Actions Stinheim The dwarves, desperate to come to an agreement with the rebels without involving other countries, sends a new emissary, stocked with vast quantities of fresh brewed beer, in an attempt to restart diplomatic negotiations and strike a deal. (Culture x 3). Realizing it might not be enough, they also raise an army in the capital, and use the treasury to help fund it(+2). Ashelani The Ashik dignitary, Hajim is treated to the royal tour of the central hive. Such festivities include work moving along as usual, wordless efficiency and lavish brutality in the Colosseum. She also assigns a single proto-queen to archive their religious beliefs for further contemplation, designated Len-Ashik. (1 culture) The queen also experiments with making a breed of workers which internally brew this new "alcohol" substance while feeding off of grains. (Income 1) The Carcino riders are sent to scout further into the plains, and establish a secondary hive. (expansion) Several ashelani in the jungle discover that chewing certain plants allows them to create colored resins, which dazzle the eye (culture 1). Mu'lakka "You're not my real mom!" exclaimed Jin'rak to Elma, the unofficial mother of the 2nd Ground Force on the island of Mu'lan, just north of the notoriously difficult to capture Big Island. Elma was an incredibly good cook so morale was high with all of the delicious fish filet dinners, but Jin'rak, the captain in charge of leading the next assault, was getting desperate. Many attempts to capture the island had failed before him, and he had just been notified that morning that he was being placed in the lead. He decided a new tactic could work; he would sail around the back of the island with 3/4 of his force, with a small diversion force sailing to the normal landing position to distract the natives. Once the diversion was in place, Jin'rak's forces would surprise the natives by taking their villages while their warriors were on the northern beach. The only problem with this plan was the rough terrain on the back of the island, a fact pointed out by Elma, who noted it might be difficult to stage a landing against the rocky outcroppings and short cliffs to the south. After informing Elma that she wasn't his real mom (and then reassuring her that he did still love her delicious fish dinners, and the fact that she washed the entire platoon's laundry each morning), Jin'rak notified her that he had a plan for that contingency as well. He had ordered his men to make enough rope ladders to be thrown from the ships up to the shore so that the men could get to land. After spreading out to the native's villages and securing the hearts of the women and children with tactical fruit baskets and hats (painstakingly prepared and knitted by Elma over the recent course of the campaign), the army would surround the outnumbered natives on the beach where the diversion force would be waiting, and call for unconditional surrender and annexation, with the benefits that come of being a part of the wealthiest seafarers in the world. (4 rolls of Expansion) As the sun set the day before his plan would be put into action, Jin'rak laid back in anticipation on the bow of his ship, enjoying another fish dinner and listening to the sound of the waves that would soon carry him to his destiny as The Man who captured the Big Island. Kaz'ur Attempting to further solidify control of their borders, the Ashik begin construction of massive walls across the mountain passes leading into their homelands. (3 Actions, Defense). In addition, improvement of the Tower of Babel continues. (1 Action). (Sorry for shit fluff, I'm on my way home from Clemson atm, phone is not conducive) Rhiam Reich After an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Stinehim rebels, followed by a long angry rant by Duke Adolph, Eckard decides that the Reich must militarize. He declares that a new military college should be founded. Military scholars from around the world will be gathered in order to create a new school capable of researching and Instituting new army reforms and military technologies. No expense will be spared. (1,2,3, Military school. 150 wealth being spent to increase first one.) The first duty of these scholars will be to find military applications for the newly developed Whiskeys. Specifically the creation of a Whiskey of Healing, or a Whiskey of Giant's Growth. The magical and recreational effects of these new brews should give the Rhiam military the ability to crush this puny rebellion. Ignati Chimeryx is most pleased that ground is being broken on his new schools. He orders additional funding, to get the project done as soon as possible (Culture). Meanwhile, he visits his new army to inspect the recruits. He likes what he sees, but has even greater ambitions (Raise Army). Suddenly remembering his run-in with the gods from years past, he restarts work on the lightning spears to replicate the lightning-arc effect (Military Tech x2). Hall of the Five Gojac squints at the light. He brushes a couple of dead cockaroaches off of his bare chest and stands up. Too fast. He sits back down. About twenty feet away he sees a shrine titan fucking what looks like a antelope covered in scales. From his spot behind the booze warehouse, he begins drawing schematics on the wall for a animal/machine/trebuchet to remove vomit from his clothes and launch it elsewhere. Garma has dinner with her two Constantians. During dinner she barely speaks, instead staring through them, thinking. After dinner, she inspects their reproductive organs, and is dismayed to find them both male. She immidiately sets about creating a female clone of the stronger one. Her end goal: a new Ahazuara, populated with Constantians and ruled by the Five. Garma's new project is right up The Alterer's alley, so he helps bend the genders of the two new worshippers. Rucahn, equipped with a Solid Arts minor, begins building a statue of his vision, complete with real flames and pollock-style paint splatter. Results: Stinheim: 10, 11, 5, 11 The consul is disturbed to find that a masterfully crafted dwarfen stone box, filled with the heads of all the emissaries they have sent to the DPC, has made it back to Stinheim, especially considering that the box is incredibly heavy and would have taken days upon days to carry undetected. Not to mention the logistics of preserving all the heads and carrying the box into the capitol unseen. Interesting, but also quite grim in terms of the future of your nation. Peace is a distant memory in war-torn Stinheim, and without a proper police force, violence is common on the streets of your undercities. Despite the allocated funds, the consul is unable to muster a sizeable army, as your recruitment centers are targeted by revolutionary guerrillas and have mostly been systematically burned or destroyed (-60 wealth). Ashelani Dominion: 15, 19, 11, 7 Your people, having never needed to archive anything remotely spiritual before, nevertheless put their heart into it. The archived history and customs of the Len-Ashik religion are stored in a residual psychic cache of one of the protoqueens deep within your burrows (+1 culture). Meanwhile great advances are made in the field of brewing. The grains you import are fermented in the stomachs of millions and millions of writhing maggots in special, highly unsanitary production pits. In your tongue, this new drink is called “carrion wine.” The production process, of course, is kept highly secret. The brew is a big seller in both Stinheim and the Dwarfen Peoples’ Federation, and you figure what the dwarfs don’t know won’t hurt them (+5 income). Your expansion makes no ground, unfortunately (-10 wealth). Finally, the new colored resin has not really caught on at all. The Mu’lakka Lands: 1, 5, 10, 15 Jin’rak is the first up the rope ladders, leading his men up the fabled outcroppings of Big Island. The ladder is actually a straight vertical shot up an orange-brown cliff, at the top of which is one of the native villages that your people have worked so hard to impress. He reaches the top rung and places his hand on the soft, loamy earth at the top of the cliff. There is a sting. He feels something wet. He pulls back his hand—it seems to be covered in clear, sticky goo. He takes a sniff. Mango. There is a moment of recognition. “Those bas—” Jin’rak never gets to finish his sentence. A grape fruit hits him on the side of the head. On the top of the cliff can be seen hundreds of natives, holding the fruit baskets which your people distributed. The pelting begins. Your soldiers begin to tumble off the rope ladder onto the sharp rocks only fifty feet below. Horrible cracking and splitting sounds can be heard. There are screams. Jin’rak is hit in the head again by a particularly well aimed Mu’lakkan Spine Fruit. His grip loosens, and he falls almost anticlimactically downward with a tiny wail. Jin’rak perished that day, along with all of his men, but your people still refer to him as “The Man Who Captured the Big Island” because Mu’lakkans have a penchant for sarcasm (-40 wealth). Kaz’ur: 18, 19, 1, 20 The walls continue to rise, and a second layer grants your nation a sizeable defensive increase (+6 defense bonus for two layers). From Mt. Skyhammer in southern Stinheim, your fantastic, gleaming spires are visible far to the north. Far more impressive, though, is the spiraling, magnificent height of the tower along your inner wall. A small contingent of dwarfs have gathered at the snowy height of the mountain and founded a settlement, just so they can gaze at the walls with telescopes and admire the craftsmanship and intricate, foreign symbols and glyphs adorning the sides. Day by day, the dwarfs notice, the tower continues to rise, its construction aided by a new support system using flexible wooden beams. A school of mathematicians has been founded on the mountain just to try and hypothesize the height of the tower. Their current estimate is around 900 feet tall. Though they don’t know it, they’re about 200 feet off. Inside your nation, Babil has become the seat of your religious order and a symbol of national pride (+1 to culture bonus of tower, +2 to military, as the tower now inspires all of your troops, +2 to income due to religious donations intake). Rhiam Reich: 18, 20, 2, 15 The military college is established at a relatively fast pace, and soon, new, well-trained officers are being added to your army divisions overseas (+4 military, -150 wealth). These officers can be easily distinguished by their distinctive helmets and their graduation sabers, their most treasured possessions. School teachings emphasize mounted combat and chivalry, as well as a strict code of moral conduct for all officers. Special Whiskeys of healing are developed by your most intrepid dwarfen brewers, many of whom are refugees hailing from Stinheim. One hard drink will patch up all but the most grievous of wounds. Of course, this new brew is highly regulated by the government, and the profit from total whiskey sales goes down (whiskey now only gives you +3 income, +1 military bonus). The Ignati Tribes: 18, 17, 11, 8 The school is finished, and the wizened Hygh Baelric, former racist sculptor, has been commissioned as the Grand Elder, to guide the new Ignati children into a global age, an age in which the tribe now has contact with much of the known races. Classes are taught on hunting, spirituality, history, and eugenics. Your children are well-educated and also more aware of the anomalies in dwarfen musculature that make them physically inferior to dragonkin (+2 culture). A new army is raised, your people thrille by the prospect of a military nation unfurling its wings for the first time. Chimeryx gives a speech about how it is the destiny of the Ignati to conquer, no longer to hunt (-10 income). In secret, though, the thunderspear research has not been going as well as Chimeryx had hoped, and your wisest mages are left unable to replicate the effect Chimeryx claims to have seen that night. The Halls of the Five: 13, 12, 17, 13 The trebuchet will need more work. The original design was going to be a biological creature/weapon hybrid, but it seems that a more artificial form of life is needed, similar to the abstract and shapeless shrine titans (which are incapable of fucking, Gojac later realizes). These weapon titans have been built and resemble giant, floating, blue obelisks, however, they cannot yet fire boulders telekinetically as Gojac had hoped (1 more success). Females, as it turns out, already exist among the Toquans and Cordishmen, but Garma is displeased that they are not more assertive. She decides to give the females advanced pyrokinetic abilities to advance feminism. The cultural notion of male superiority to women that had carried over from Constantia has been eradicated, although they’re still fanatical and all (+2 culture). The Inquirer, frightened by the increase in house fires among the Constantians, begins work on his visionary art project to warn against the danger of fire (2 more successes) Battles Duke Adolph smiles inside the red command tent as he lights a cigar. The dwarfen ambassador from Stinheim is slightly nervous. "The surge," he says, "is working." "What do you mean by that?" the ambassador asks tentatively. "Just two days ago," Adolph says, taking a draw on his cigar, "our advance force caught one of the rebel armies by surprise. Information presented to me this morning suggests that they've been routed. We suffered almost no casualties." The dwarf hols up a finger. "Excuse me, did you say 'one of' the armies?" The Duke nods and runs a hand through his hair. "Intelligence suggests they've raised a second army, which is pretty impressive considering you have ten times their resources." The dwarf stands up, indignant. "The new government under Azaghal has been--" The Duke interrupts: "Inactive. Noncommitted Impotent. All of these words spring to mind." He flips his cloak over his shoulder and strides out of the tent, not waiting for a reply. The rebels rolled an 2 (+5) and a 4 (+5) for a total of 16. The Reich rolled a 10 (+11). One rebel army was destroyed, the other is still alive. Category:The Ledgers of Baldr